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Conceptual outline for conceptual essay on Images and the film Valkyrie directed by Bryan Singer and starring Tom Cruise
The following is an excerpt from a conceptual book entitled ''New Ideas? ''—the collected essays and conceptual essays of Nick Fesette , all conceptually related to the imagination and its various relationships to popular culture and its effect(s). Conceptual outline for conceptual essay on Images and the film Valkyrie ''directed by Bryan Singer and starring Tom Cruise Title: something clever and/or provocative relating the above-mentioned themes: eye-grabbing but tasteful Introduction: explain the impulse of the paper: to introduce the idea of the Image and critically analyze how the it works in people: acknowledge the assumption that Claus von Stauffenberg and Adolf Hitler stir the imagination: state the following: “If the filmmakers chose to make the film ''Valkyrie, then the telling of the historical events used as the subject of said film must have stirred their imaginations, therefore the said historical events and their participants must have some imaginational value to those filmmakers.” Whether or not there is any material value of the imagination is a question for another conceptual paper (see conceptual pages). Whether or not there is any material value to the film itself is better left unsaid for the purposes of this conceptual paper. Part 1: thesis: Claus von Stauffenberg and Adolf Hitler represent a dialectic of fully-formed Images, which are the basis of the imagination as a whole: explain the Image as it relates to acting as Konstantin Stanislavsky envisaged it, the concept of building an inner monologue underneath a script composed entirely of “pictures” that stimulate emotion: Stauffenberg and Hitler are opposite strong Images: define Image as something more than “picture” and more than “idea;” it is a mix of montage and myth: an Image must be a thing fully-formed, so that any of its individual aspects can be cut away and used to define the Image as a whole precisely: an Image is close to a myth or religious figure but it is not necessary for a belief system to be built upon it, though the seeds for one are surely there. Part 2: Adolf Hitler: use White Noise by Don Delillo as a starting point: Jack Gladney is the pioneering professor of Hitler studies, though he does not speak a word of German: that novel seems to me to be the story of how strong Images shape human life: in one scene two professors, Gladney and another, “duel” each other using their knowledge of Hitler and Elvis Presley respectively: replace Elvis with Stauffenberg and we have Valkyrie: describe Hitler’s performance and appearance as methodically self-conscious, but also use his actions to support the above-proposed idea of the Image: removing his name, appearance, and any other typically identity-defining contextual information, if his life’s actions were written down, most everyone would be able to attach significance to them. Part 3: Claus von Stauffenberg: compare his appearance to other Images: pirates, Nicolas Ray, Nick Fury, etc: introduce the idea that Valkyrie is not an attempt to reproduce historical events for thrills, but an attempt to establish Stauffenberg’s unknown Image to combat Hitler’s formidable and ubiquitous one: the film begins with Stauffenberg’s transformation from faceless, discontented Nazi officer, to Stauffenberg as superhero: cite Singer’s comparison between Stauffenberg and Superman. Part 4: How to make an Image: using Valkyrie as a model for the way to construct an Image: Carl’s origin story mentioned above; distinct appearance, eye patch, gray Nazi uniform, one hand; superobjective, meaning an transcendent goal or ambition without much internally contradicting or complicating its attainment, to kill Hitler: there were many assassination attempts on Hitler, why would Singer choose this one as a subject specifically? Part 5: discussion of superobjective as Stanislavsky imagined it: the failure of Valkyrie: this last piece is the most difficult to achieve in building an Image and why the movie fails in that task because the historical events do not lend themselves to do it: it is obvious to see from history that Stauffenberg and his company were personally conflicted about killing their leader and staging the coup, and the movie attempts to reconcile this with the single-mindedness of Image-building: we have Stauffenberg’s love and worry for his family’s safety addressed briefly, the various disagreements among the conspirators resulting in Stauffenberg acknowledged as the only person willing to see the deed to its completion, and Tom Cruise’s supernatural disregard for consequences and practically no fear of death: Singer succeeds in building the Image in all categories but for this last and most important piece: Stauffenberg is almost too much of a human being to be a more than a minor Image (despite Cruise) he has too many doubts and fears of failure to stir human emotions, not to mention the real fact that he failed in his mission: Hitler is a stronger Image because he succeeded in his: he created a movement of hatred and violence against what he perceived as the enemies of the Aryan race, despite his eventual defeat: Hitler proved his superobjective to be possible, while Stauffenberg did not; in fact, the end of the film is filled with repeated words and scenes supporting Hitler’s infallibility and near immortality: rather than making Stauffenberg a martyr as I conjecture Singer intended, this repetition mythologizes Hitler’s Image even further: it would have been better to end the film with the explosion at Wolf’s Lair. Conclusion: in the end, Bryan Singer does more to solidify Hitler’s Image than he does to challenge it with Stauffenberg’s: perhaps include this tangent: Quentin Tarantino attempts a similar thing with Inglourious Basterds, which may be more successful, specifically by blowing up the Hitler Image in the end quite literally. Possibility for moral in addition to critical response: “Good guy Nazi” films like Valkyrie are cancers to the contemporary popular imagination because they propagate Hitler’s Image nearly a century after his death: let’s find new popular Images, of subjects that are good and not evil.